Laptop computers are powered using both line power and battery power. The processor, graphics processor, memory and display of the laptop computer consume a significant amount of power during operation. One significant limitation of laptop computers relates to the amount of time that the laptop can be operated using batteries without recharging. The relatively high power dissipation of the laptop computer usually corresponds to a relatively short battery life.
Referring now to FIG. 1A, an exemplary computer architecture 4 is shown to include a processor 6 with memory 7 such as cache. The processor 6 communicates with an input/output (I/O) interface 8. Volatile memory 9 such as random access memory (RAM) 10 and/or other suitable electronic data storage also communicates with the interface 8. A graphics processor 11 and memory 12 such as cache increase the speed of graphics processing and performance.
One or more I/O devices such as a keyboard 13 and a pointing device 14 (such as a mouse and/or other suitable device) communicate with the interface 8. A high power disk drive (HPDD) 15 such as a hard disk drive having one or more platters with a diameter greater than 1.8″ provides nonvolatile memory, stores data and communicates with the interface 8. The HPDD 15 typically consumes a relatively high amount of power during operation. When operating on batteries, frequent use of the HPDD 15 will significantly decrease battery life. The computer architecture 4 also includes a display 16, an audio output device 17 such as audio speakers and/or other input/output devices that are generally identified at 18.
Referring now to FIG. 1B, an exemplary computer architecture 20 includes a processing chipset 22 and an I/O chipset 24. For example, the computer architecture may be a Northbridge/Southbridge architecture (with the processing chipset corresponding to the Northbridge chipset and the I/O chipset corresponding to the Southbridge chipset) or other similar architecture. The processing chipset 22 communicates with a processor 25 and a graphics processor 26 via a system bus 27. The processing chipset 22 controls interaction with volatile-memory 28 (such as external DRAM or other memory), a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus 30, and/or Level 2 cache 32. Level 1 cache 33 and 34 may be associated with the processor 25 and/or the graphics processor 26, respectively. In an alternate embodiment, an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) (not shown) communicates with the processing chipset 22 instead of and/or in addition to the graphics processor 26. The processing chipset 22 is typically but not necessarily implemented using multiple chips. PCI slots 36 interface with the PCI bus 30.
The I/O chipset 24 manages the basic forms of input/output (I/O). The I/O chipset 24 communicates with an Universal Serial Bus (USB) 40, an audio device 41, a keyboard (KBD) and/or pointing device 42, and a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) 43 via an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus 44. Unlike the processing chipset 22, the I/O chipset 24 is typically (but not necessarily) implemented using a single chip, which is connected to the PCI bus 30. A HPDD 50 such as a hard disk drive also communicates with the I/O chipset 24. The HPDD 50 stores a full-featured operating system (OS) such as Windows XP® Windows 2000®, Linux and MAC®-based OS that is executed by the processor 25.